Painting Rainbows
by VerelLupin
Summary: Marjorie is daddy's little girl and she'll do anything to help him.


**My First Hunger Games Fiction...I'm so excited.**

**Enjoy. (Flames welcome.)**

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><p>It happens very quickly.<p>

One moment his hand is up and ready to put down a streak of color, the next moment he's on the floor paint bleeding all around him.

He mumbles real or not real and closes his eyes so hard its almost as if he wants to be blind.

I look at the half-finished painting and recognize my mother or what is supposed to be my mother.

Her storm cloud eyes are cold and narrowed and her mouth is set in a grim slash across her face. She looks evil and I've never seen that expression on her face ever.

I approach my father carefully. I've been told many a time that I resemble her physically but that I am my father's daughter, so with this understanding I get close and kneel.

I don't touch him. I just begin picking up the scattered brushes and deposit them in a can. I grab a rag and soak up as much of the spilled paint as I can.

I run the rag through the remaining paint and it blurs and runs into each other forming an interesting broken rainbow.

It occurs to me that this is a perfect metaphor of my father. He is so bright and full of color but at the same time blurred by his experiences and fractured by what he hates about himself. This weakness that he thinks conquers him but that I think makes him the best man I know.

I hear footsteps behind us and see my mother freeze in the doorway. Her hands clenching on the frame as she spots the lack of distance between my father and me.

"Marjorie, come here," she entreats.

I ignore her and continue coating the paint over the floorboards. My father's gaze is riveted on my hands. He sticks his fingers in the parts of the paint that have clumped and spreads them around more evenly.

"Rainbows are the hardest to replicate," he mumbles in a near normal voice and I hear my mother sag against the frame, her body making the door creak as it catches her weight.

My father's head instantly turns on the noise and his lips curl back over his teeth and his eyes glare into my mother's alarmed ones.

Katniss Mellark has always been the most fearless person I know but seeing her slumped on the floor warily eyeing my father, I realize that she does have a fear.

Her hand is curled over her distended belly but it's not that which she protects. She is covering the ring of her left hand. She fears loosing him completely.

She slides slowly towards him calling his name but my father snarls.

"Daddy?"

"No Marjorie," my mother says but I reach out and stroke my father's back as if he were a kitten. "Always, daddy. You said you'd never leave us. You said you'd stay with me always."

The change is instant as his body looses the tension and he crumbles on the floor.

His body shakes and my mother rushes to him afraid he might be convulsing. She tries to shield me but I see that he is just burying his face into the wooden floor. His tears mixing with the artificial rainbow we created.

"I'm sorry, Marjie. I'm so sorry, Katniss," he says but doesn't remove his face from the paint.

I scoot closer and roll his face onto my young lap. I trace the tattoo of color on his cheek and my mother presses a kiss to his forehead. She puts her hand on his cheek and he turns and kisses her wrist transferring some of the colors onto her palm and then her dress as she tries to get up.

I dip my hand in the paint and place a print on her dress. She looks down at image of my small hand next to hers. She sits back down and my father guided by our hands places his beside ours.

Eventually normalcy is returned but whenever my mother sits contemplating or my father is lost to his pain I pull out the pieces of the dress, I insisted they frame, and hold it in front of them reminding them of that day.

My brother, Nathaniel Erik Mellark, is born and the episodes and nightmares are less and less frequent. On his first birthday he too adds a handprint. It is the last day the dress is needed. My parents, brother and myself have peace.

And when it rains and the rainbows come out, my parent's hold each other's hands and kiss. My brother and I paint trying to capture the rainbows.


End file.
